Discover - Moving Vehicles With Gear Systems

Special gear systems can be used to make various types of motion.

Gears are a very reliable way to transfer motion, but they have some special abilities as well.  Suppose you need to turn a spinning motion into a straight-line motion – gears can do that!  Most modern cars are equipped with rack and pinion steering.  The "rack" is a straight bar with gear teeth, and the "pinion" is a small gear that meshes with it.

 Video

Watch this ADLC lesson on Rack and Pinion Gears.



In a worm gear arrangement, the worm (the worm looks like a shaft with grooves cut into it) is almost always the driving gear.  This produces a force advantage.  Remember that simple machines produce a large force by using a big movement to cause a small movement.  The worm of a worm gear arrangement must spin many times (a big movement) to make the big driven gear make only one turn (a small movement).
Another type of gear is a bevel gear. Bevel gears are specially made to transfer motion at various angles.

The teeth of bevel gears are not flat. This allows them to mesh at various angles.

In this activity, you will use everything you have learned about gears to make a vehicle that uses a gear system to move.

 Notebook: How can you make a vehicle that moves using gears?

  1. Click here to download this activity.
  2. Complete this activity using the links provided (in the activity and below). 
  3. Save your completed work to your Machines Notebook.

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